Shoot First
by Austin B
Summary: Dredd/Anderson one shots. A little bromance, a little romance, a little smut. Anderson being kickass, etc.
1. Chapter 1

Watched Dredd the other day and I like Karl Urban so this came to mind. I know literally nothing about the comics, so...just keep that in mind.

* * *

It had been three months since Peach Trees, and Anderson had yet to see his face. She thought about it often, more often than was appropriate.

They'd been working together more often than not, something about their skill sets complementing each other. Somehow, they'd gotten themselves stranded, cut off from command, with a laundry list of perps on their tails. This time, though, Dredd actually listened to her suggestion to evade until their comms came back online. She wondered at that, and the idea of entering his thoughts crossed her mind briefly. She'd have given nearly anything to know what he was thinking at that moment, when he'd gruffly said, "Okay," to her suggestion. She thought his eyes may have lingered on her then, for a moment too long, but how could she have known? His helmet was always in the way.

Ditching her suit was a little more difficult than she'd anticipated. With it went all of the protection and safety she'd been hiding behind all these months. She felt vulnerable and weak, and she hated herself for it. She had to call to mind all the sentences she'd carried out without ever needing that armor. Then, she heard Dredd's heavy footsteps coming back down the hall and felt safe again. Their partnership had taught her more in a few months than she'd learned in her many years of training. He'd taught her one thing she never thought she'd be able to learn, though they'd tried to drill it into her: trust.

Anderson pulled a short leather jacket on over a grey tanktop, which rode just at the top of her jeans that sat low on her hips. She exited the changing room of the mall, which had been abandoned in the firefight. Dredd was standing there, waiting for her. She could hardly recognize him in plain clothes. He wore his standard issue boots under faded jeans, with a dark grey T-shirt stretching over his broad shoulders. His helmet was gone. Anderson wanted to be able to memorize the scars that marked his arms with raised, white tallies, but her eyes were drawn to his face.

She didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't this. She sometimes wondered if he even had a face, or if he was just a robot from the nose up. Sometimes she imagined he'd shaved his head, and his skull would be covered in burns or scars, something that made him not want to remove his helmet. But nothing prepared her for the thick, messy brown locks and dark brown eyes that stared back at her.

Such was her surprise and, if she was being honest, delight, that her control slipped for a moment. Though he didn't show it, he must have been a bit surprised too, because the impenetrable walls he'd put up once he'd found out about her ability vanished for a split second. A wave of want and affection hit her so strongly she nearly had to take a step back to reorient herself. Just as quickly, it was pulled back, and Anderson was left reeling, confused and really, really turned on.

"Oh," she breathed. Dredd was stoic as always, his lips tight in a frown. An eyebrow lifted.

"Oh?" he repeated, his voice a little less rough than usual. She thought he might be bemused at her shock at his appearance, and perhaps a little pleased.

Anderson shook her head to clear it. "I mean, um, let's go, sir," she managed to say sharply, breathless as she was, and strode out past him, taking care to brush lightly against his shoulder. She thought she heard him growl deeply as he followed.


	2. Chapter 2

They'd been lucky the past week. It seemed like the past six months, either one or both of them was torn up and bleeding. But the past week, they'd managed to come out of their trials unscathed. Anderson sometimes wondered if it was a shortcoming on her part, that spilled their blood, but she quickly realized that the tough cases were getting thrown to them more and more frequently.

Their partnership had garnered some attention within the Hall. Not only were their case solve rates higher than Dredd's last year, but she was a failed Rookie who was quickly becoming one of the most respected and feared Judges in Mega City 1.

But neither of them were foolish enough to believe the streak of luck would last. It only made it harder, for Anderson at least, to go out each day, wondering when it would break.

As she had feared, it broke in a superbly glorious and violent fashion.

She couldn't identify the gang that attacked them, but it must be either the Angels or the Devils, because they were packing serious heat and had been waiting for them. They were cornered, back to back behind a shred of concrete that had blasted loose from the building where their firefight had occurred.

Someone dropped in from above, and as soon as Anderson put him down, another fell, until there were five against their two. She heard Dredd's grunt of pain and they were quickly apprehended.

They were blindfolded, cuffed and drug, none too gently, to an apartment building a few miles away. Anderson counted twenty nine floors. Dredd's breathing grew increasingly labored on the trip, and Anderson was trying to recall his position when he'd been hit, to determine how best to aid him.

When the blindfolds were shucked off, Anderson counted six perps in the room, and then looked over to where Dredd knelt to her left. He was slumped forward, and blood was steadily trickling from a hole in his armor on his right side. He was looking at her through his visor, and though she couldn't see his eyes, she somehow knew what he wanted.

Before the boss of the operation could even begin speaking, Anderson entered Dredd's mind, finding no resistance at all. The first time she'd entered his mind at the behest of her superior, she'd found it a bit more difficult than usual. He had walls, even before he knew of her ability. And since then, the walls had grown thicker and taller. She could never enter unless he permitted, which was only when it was absolutely necessary to communicate without being discovered. She'd probed around his mind's shield when she thought he wasn't paying attention, when a normal human would be relaxing and their defenses would be down, but his never went down, it seemed. She didn't know if he could tell she was trying to get in, so after a few times, she simply stopped.

His thoughts were always sharp and clear, so focused and controlled. In his mind she saw him jumping over his restraints, incapacitating the perp behind him with a headbutt, and she saw herself doing the same, spinning behind the perp who held her to grab her primary weapon and dispatch the contents of the room. She had doubts that he could actually perform the action in his state, but he didn't give her time to question him long. In his mind she saw a countdown flash from 3 to 2 to 1.

They moved at the same time, and the perps were unprepared for a synchronized attack. It happened exactly as she'd seen him predict. In ten seconds, the room was silent. Dredd got on his comm and called it in. When he disconnected, he grunted and began removing his armor to dress his wound. He'd lost a lot of blood and wavered on his feet. Anderson leapt to help him sit.

She placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back onto the ground. He growled at her, but she ignored him.

"So much for the streak," she murmured and he huffed in agreement. She had his armor pulled away and his shirt pulled up to see the flesh torn away at his side. It was a graze, but it had taken a bit of flesh with it. She removed her gloves to better apply the sealing foam. She was aware that direct skin contact increased the psychic connection, but she didn't believe anything could penetrate Dredd's walls. She was wrong.

Perhaps he had unwittingly left his defenses down after letting her in moments ago. Perhaps he'd lost more blood than she'd thought. Perhaps he wanted her to feel the pride he felt in her. Her hands stilled momentarily, shocked. She saw herself again in his mind, the way she moved, the sureness of her shots and the justice in her judgments. Did she really move with such grace and strength?

"Sir?" she questioned. He didn't answer, he only took the sealing staples from the kit on her belt and handed them to her. She fought a smile and thought the twitch at the corner of his downturned lips may have been him doing the same.


	3. Chapter 3

The blood.

The blood just wouldn't stop. There was so much of it. It covered her hands, making her fingers slippery as they moved together. It covered the armor up to her forearms.

Anderson had abandoned her facade of calm control several minutes ago as she tried to stave the quick flow of Dredd's blood from the wound in his shoulder. It was a puncture from falling debris; a long, thin column of steel had slid through his chest like a hot knife through butter, just below his collarbone and just to the left of his left shoulder. The debris had to be removed in order to get Dredd into the vehicle she commandeered. Another Judge had appeared to help her shove him in the back of the van, and she ordered him to drive. She couldn't even comprehend who it was through her panic and his helmet, but he complied with her terse commands.

Dredd was in and out of consciousness as she tried every tool available in both their belts to seal the gaping hole through his body, but nothing worked. She chanted to herself inside her head that he would be okay, though his face was pale and deathly looking.

"You'll be alright," she repeated again and again out loud to him, though she doubted he could hear her. The jostling of the speeding vehicle only aggravated the wound, but Anderson couldn't really tell the Judge driving to slow down.

She was relieved to hand Dredd off to professionals, though her heart still hammered wildly in her ears. They were given priority treatment and rushed in to the emergency room immediately. Anderson was still applying pressure to the wound, as they rolled his gurney toward an ominous looking set of swinging doors. A nurse appeared suddenly and removed her ungloved hands from Dredd's wound, replacing them with her own. She was frazzled and her mind was buzzing with the loss of her control. She felt a sharp jolt of pity from the nurse who'd touched her.

The Judge who'd rushed them to the hospital was gone when she returned to the waiting room. Command had instructed her to return to base, but she sank into the first chair she came to. She had an unpleasant and unwelcome flash of a future sans Judge Dredd. He was her mentor and had become her friend. And though she never knew how he felt, he may see her as an annoying burden, the affection she felt for him grew what seemed like every moment. She still had so much more to learn from him.

It must have been an hour or so later that a nurse apprised her of the situation. They had no real answers. He might live, he might not. Anderson supposed it wasn't any different than any other day they rode out into the City. But somehow this seemed unreal. Dredd couldn't die. The nurse left and Anderson sank back into the chair. She felt helpless and hated it.

Anderson cast out a mental net through the hospital to find him. She often did this during missions, to keep track of his position. Her abilities were growing, strengthening, and she'd use it this once to give something good, rather than to get information. She could identify him easily. His mind was the only one that had iron around it, though at the moment, the iron was thin and malleable. He was in a drug induced sleep, and he felt no pain. Anderson was grateful for that.

She felt tears escaping from under her closed eyelids and roll heavily down her face. There was a red-splattered blackness in his mind, filled with anger, hatred, pain and loneliness. Anderson was taken aback and breathless from the depth of it. She concentrated and tried to project warmth and affection to him, to soothe him. As she felt his mind register this feeling, an image suddenly appeared that chased away all of the darkness from him. Blonde hair bouncing, shaking and turning, shimmering in the sunlight.

Anderson choked on a sob. The image grew clearer and she recognized her own face, clean of the blood, dirt and dust that so often smudged it. She was smiling in his mind, and all of the warmth and love she was sending him came back to her doubled. She left his thoughts with this happy image playing on a loop through them.

She waited there, her tears dry on her face, for many hours. Her muscles were stiff and achy from the strain of the day and from sitting so long in one position. But she felt as though she couldn't move. As if her stillness would stabilize him.

Finally the nurse reappeared. Tears burned her eyes before the woman could even speak. There was blood on her shirt.

"He's stable and in intensive care," she began, and Anderson was on her feet, ignoring the ache in her knees. The woman tried to stop her, but Anderson stilled her with the force of her mind without even slowing her swift strides. She incapacitated five more who tried to stop her as she followed the sound of Dredd's mind through the hallways.

She almost wished she hadn't come when she saw him lying on the hospital bed, with no less than six tubes connecting him to a large machine that monitored his vitals. A white bandaged wrapped around his chest and left shoulder. He wouldn't want anyone to see him like this. Still, her boots took her to his bedside. The trauma, emotional and physical, was taking its toll on her. She felt foggy.

Anderson placed the tip of her index finger against the back of his hand. He was warm. His thoughts were protected by only a thin veil that opened as if it was expecting her. Painkillers and sedatives were flowing through his system, which made swirling colors dance in his mind.

Perhaps he recognized her presence, or perhaps this image was often called to his thoughts, but she saw the light reflecting off her bright blonde hair again. Her hair was often filled with dust and she used only the most basic shampoo, but through the filter of his eyes, it looked soft. She felt his desire to touch it. Anderson sat in the chair in the corner when she thought her legs would no longer hold her.

She half hoped he wouldn't remember this when he woke, but she projected an image long practiced in her own mind, of his bare fingers threading through her locks, brushing down her neck and back up into the blonde tresses. In reaction to this image, strangely, she felt his relief. As if this had been a desperate need rather than a passing desire.

Anderson left the room and returned to her quarters to sleep away the emotions rattling through her bones.

Dredd pulled through, as she'd really always known he would. He was too stubborn to die. His recovery was speedy, considering. Still, in her frequent visits, she threatened to forget about him if he didn't return soon. When he did return, Anderson felt it her duty to give him a hard time for a few weeks.

After his close call, Anderson thought she felt him watching her as he hadn't done since her first days as a Judge. It was only mildly irritating, as it brought back a few of her rookie insecurities. Mostly it was pleasant, and she decided not to look too far into it.

A few weeks later, they were sitting on their bikes next to each other, debating who would choose their destination, when he removed a glove. Anderson thought little of it and continued to make the point that she had let him choose their direction for the past week, as courtesy to the wounded. She quieted, though, when he reached his bare hand out to her.

She watched him as he intently wound one lock of her hair around his index finger briefly, and then let it go. Somehow, he produced a leaf that she was sure hadn't been there before, and he tossed it over his shoulder to be caught by the wind.

"Alright, you choose," he said gruffly as he yanked his glove back on.


End file.
